>> rose: welcome to the program. i'm charlie rose. the program is "charlie rose: the week." just ahead, the road to the white house turns to new york. and as the president heads for saudi arabia, questions about the relationship. and lupita nyong'o stars in "eclipse" broadway's first all-female production. >> you have to find a space where you're vulnerable, but you also have to be pushed to the edge and allow this environment to be quite dangerous and alive. so lisa creates an environment where he doesn't let people off the hook, where she does challenge them, but she also allows them to feel extremely safe. >> rose: we will have those stories and more on what happened and what might happen. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by:

>> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications >> rose: and so you dpan how zoo take care of a world. >> rose: is it luck at all or something else? >> having a whole new kind of luck. >> rose: what's the object lesson here? >> change the conversation between us. >> rose: tell me the significance of the moment. >> rose: this was the week bernie sanders and hillary clinton met for one last debate. donald trump cried foul over the republican party rules, and the golden state warriors finished with the best single-season record in the history of professional basketball. here are the sights and sounds of the past seven days. >> russian fighter jets flew dangerously close to a u.s. navy destroyer. >> spacex marks another

milestone. >> powerful earthquakes knocked japan. the force knocked down homes and trapped people. it also sparked fires. >> an active-duty navy commander has been charged with spying. there are reports he passed secret information on to china. >> rose: violent storms pound the south. >> it sounded like we were being pelted with rocks. >> the white house asking congress for more money to combat the zika virus, now that the virus is a bigger threat than initially thought. >> the new champion on the world stage of golf. danny willet has won the masters. >> well, on this very rare occasion, i'm nearly speechs. >> it's official, number 73, the greatest regular season in n.b.a. history. >> i don't think this will ever be broken. >> the energy that was in the building was unbelievable. >> it's a corrupt system. when everything is done, i find out i get less delegates than this guy who got his a kicked.

>> when donald loses he curses and yells and insults anyone near. >> it came out that president obama has been allowed to see special advance episodes of the new season of "game of thrones." obama said he watches "game of thrones" to be reminded what it is like for sane people to rup for leadership. >> senator sanders does call me unqualified. i've been called a lot of things in my life. that was a first. >> i do question her judgment. >> they'll follow that up tomorrow with a rap battle in the bronx. ♪ i walk the line >> verizon workers are walking off the job. >> nearly 40,000 workers, one of the largest strikes in the company's history ♪ we've got a thing called the crocka dial rock ♪ >> terrifying moments for a man fishing with his daughter on a louisiana lake. >> oh, my god!

>> rose: every presidential candidate was in new york this week, and the democrats faced off for a fiery final debate in the brooklyn navy yard. all this comes just days before new york's crucial tuesday primaries. for more we turn to major garrett. he is the chief white house correspondent for cbs news but has also been covering the republican primaries and i am pleased to have him here and to talk about where we are. new york is crucial? >> new york is important. it's going to be a place for donald trump to reset. he's going to win new york hand ildy. we'll get the statewide vote, which is 14 delegates and he's going to win most of the congressional districts, 27 of them in new york, three delegates each. if he gets a majority in each of those, he'll run the table and get 95 delegates and regaipt momentum lost in the last couple of weeks to ted cruz. >> rose: can he get 1227 before the convention? >> he can get it if he wins california on june 7, and the month of may will be crucial for

donald trump. and i'm a little bit curious why there's been so much time in new york. new york is very solidly in his column. in may, indiana, nebraska, other places that don't lay as well for trump-- oregon, washington-- other places he could be, i think, spending better time getting ahead of the curve there against ted cruz and hasn't been. may is going to be a crucial month for donald trump in determining whether or not he wins it outright before the convention. >> rose: he's spending a lot of time complaining about the party rules. >> right, which is interesting on a couple of levels. one thing donald trump has told the country over and over again is he understands rules. he's incredibly shrewd about the rules. >> rose: he'sa i great negotiator. >> he's a wonderful negotiator and figures stuff out and that's what america needs as a president. and now he's baffled by rules that are incomprehensible. they're not incomprehensible. they're not pafling. they're straightforward.

he's just not getting the upper hand. >> rose: it's more important for the democrats this primary than the republicans. >> new york, absolutely. it is a bellwether for hillary clinton and it is also a place where bernie sanders can possibly demonstrate something beyond expectations about what democrats are thinking he's capable of. and if he does that, he continues to keep himself in this conversation against all odds. >> rose: clinton was up by about 10. >> right. 10 is her sweet spot. if she wins by 10 or more it's a thrashing and it's good and it's solid and it's an important vindication. >> rose: it will do some dodge sanders. >> it will blunt his perceived momentum. >> rose: isn't that amazing, though, drawing 27,000 people in brook lip for a rally. >> yes, absolute. the sanders phenomenon is real and long lasting and i think of enormous importance to this country. whatever happens in this democratic race.

bernie sanders spent years and years and years in congress saying exactly the same things he's saying now, but to zero audience, zero audience in the public and zero audience in congress. nobody paid attention to him because he was viewed as such a fringe-type figure and he's not a fringe-type figure anymore, nor is that agenda. i think that's an enormously important for this country. >> rose: there is news overseas as well. change is coming to saudi arabia, and so is president obama. he will visit riyadh on wednesday as the kingdom liberalizes, it is also growing more independent from the united states. karen elliot house is a former foreign affairs editor for the "wall street journal." she received a puleitz her prize for her coverage of the middle east. she is also the author of "on saudi arabia." >> i know both the saudis and

the americans publicly like to say, "we have a close, long relationship." but the distrust of saudi arabia now of the u.s., which has been building at least since we invaded iraq in 2003 against their strong advice, but it has now become so eroded, they simply do not trust the u.s. >> rose: and there were a series of other events that took place, too. first of all, the red line in syria. >> well, even before that. in their minds the u.s. abandoned a long-term ally, president mubarak, in egypt. and that, i think, really frightened them because they are in the long-term ally category. and then there was the red line in syria, where if assad crossed it, we would do something. and them we erased the red line.

and then most recently and most importantly in their mind, the nuclear deal with ira iran, whih they were always skeptical of. so i'm sure that will be the biggest part of the agenda. >> rose: and so they believe or they question whether the president, this president, with not that much time left in his term, would stand behind them or stand for them if they were in a crisis? >> i think they simply don't trust the united states right now. i mean, the main thing they got asked-- i spent a month there in january-- and the main thing that people brought up, whether government people or academics or normal saudis, was is the obama policy an aberration or is this u.s. policy going forward? and one individual said to me, the biggest issue confronting saudi arabia is how do we

construct a post--u.s. middle east? and i think that is where their mind is. >> rose: they certainly have made some overatures to russia and to china. >> they want to us know they have alternatives. they feel we are equating, or maybe even elvaight iran above saudi arabia, and that we certainly, as the president said in that "atlantic" interview, he told them, you've got to learn to share the middle east with iran. it is true, the geography forces thoam share the middle east, but it is very much-- to have the president say that to a journalist and the whole world as opposed to privately to the saudis, to say "you have to share," it's it's like-- it is like a man who tells his wife, "you've got to learn to share me with the mistress."

it's not exactly what the loyal partner wants to hear. >> rose: on monday i'll any to the white house to interview president obama about his trip to saudi arabia. you will see that on our next program. >> rose: gloria vanderbilt and anderson cooper, mother and son, two public figures who have managed to keep much of their life private. and now they're at the center of an hbo biography, "nothing left unsaid" i companion to the bestselling memoir. the book is called "the rainbow comes and goes." >> it started when my mom turned 91, and on her 91st birthday, she sent me this e-mail. it's in the book and it's very sort of funny and sharp and an

interesting e-mail. and it got me thinking, when my dad died when i was 10 i had a fantasy that he left me a letter and the letter would show up when i turned 18 or turned 21 and it would tell me everything about him that i didn't know. and it turns out my mom had the exact same fantasy about her father who died when she was an instant. i want that to be the same with my mom. when she died i didn't want anything left unsaid. so we started this e-mail conversation. we did it over e-mail because, "a," it was easier, but also, i travel so much. but wanted to change the conversation between us if and get to know each other as adults and in a whole new way, and it really has changed-- not only our relationship, but even my understanding of myself. >> rose: what were the nature of the e-mailed? what would you e-mail him? >> i think it started off, i said something like, "my aunt gertrude saying to me on my 17th birthday, she said

'today are you 17 whole years old'. and i wrote to anderson, "today i am 91 whole years old." and that's how really sort of we kind of started back and forth. >> rose: just anything that occurred to you, you would e-mail him? >> i would e-mail a question. you know, "what happened to your mom?" i mean, "how was your relationship?" and, you know, it started off just occasionally just-- it was like putting a message in a bottle and sendin sending ituf. and, you know, a bottle would return, sometimes within minutes, sometimes within hours or days later. >> rose: i have often said that every kid off to interview their parent. >> oh, without a doubt. >> yes. >> rose: and talk. their life. knew him for a week and rried three weeks later. >> really? >> yeah, yeah. >> rose: i've often talked to my father but not in a deep way, not nearly as much as i wanted to, about world war ii. he was in the worst of the war, the battle of the bulge. >> my mom never really had a

real conversation with her mother. i mean, her entire life. >> never, or with aunt dper triewd for that matter. >> rose: did you try? >> it just wasn't appropriate. i mean it wasn'tue know and the same thing with aunt gertrude. i knew very, very little of-- certainly about my mother, and-- >> it's so interesting. we all repeat the patterns of the past. we all repeat the things our parents have done and things we say we will not repeat we to end up repeating, and seeing the patterns my mom has lived through and what she has done. and it's been a revelation to me that we-- you know, the fact even that we both had the same fantasy of this letter that would come from our fathers was something i hadn't realized. >> rose: was there a letter? >> there was no letter, no. >> i did receive a letter though. >> rose: you did? >> from my father. >> rose: what did it say? >> no, she's kidding. she's messing you with. >> rose: you're messing with

you, aren't you, gloria. >> she said the same thing to me. i said, "there was." and she said, "i'm kidding, honey." >> rose: for 25 years, lesley stahl has built a reputation as a hard-hitting correspondent for the cbs news magazine "60 minutes." now she turns to a personal subject, the experience of being a grandmother. her new book is called "becoming grandma: the joys and science of the new grandparenting." >> it's astonishing how many-- it's something like--un, it's-- this is-- don't pin me down, but something like 30,000 people in the country are becoming grandparents every week. so we have so many of us, and we're so young because we're baby boomers. >> rose: so what's in this book? >> well, this idea that you of you're having a whole new kind

of love is part of it. it is a whole business about granny nannies. these are women who are taking care of their grandchildren one day, two days, three days a week, because their children, the mother-- parents of the babies-- are both working. they're not earning as much as we did. they simply need our help. and childcare is desperately expensive. it can cost more than college. and so they need us in a way we did not need our parents. >> rose: is it different from having children? >> oh, very, completely. >> rose: how so? >> because it's undivided with a grandchild. there's no worrying. there's no saying i have to raise them. noose no saying did i get them to the doctor on time? have i forgotten to pick them up. >> rose: so what is it? >> it's love. it's unadulterated, pure, deep loving in a way you've never done it before.

>> rose: when you began to let your friends know you were writing this, some of them said to you, "you do not want to do this. you do not want to announce how old you are and that you are a grandma." >> not my friends, not my girlfriends. this was a man, one particular man, big honcho on wall street. i'm not going to say his name. he was being a friend. he said, "this is ridiculous. you're going to hurt your career. you're going to hurt yourself." and i began, as i began to write it, to realize how many baby boomer women are now becoming grandmothers. and i thought i was, you know, the only one. and then i went out and wrote the book, and i've been interviewing grandmothers and step-grandmothers and surrogate grandmothers. and we're all in this together but we don't know that. now we're going to know it.

>> rose: tarin simon is a multidisciplinary artist engaging in photography, sculpture, text, and permanentance. her most recent exhibit is called "paper work and the world of capital." it is now at the garage museum in moscow. >> right now, we're living in a world where the gap between what we see and what's actually there seems to be so huge, particularly in political arenas, and the way in which power and 30 i-- authority is broadcast, and the means by which we construct that power. to me the flowers are representative of this pattern. and it's-- it's about those ways in which we decorate ours to create a certain-- a certain sense of control. >> rose: here's what you said about entering this project:

>> uh-huh. >> rose: this was different. >> yeah, it was different because the initial interest in using flowers came from a book that i found by a gardener of a duke named george st. claire in the 1800s and he was doing experiments on grasses and darwin cited it in his theory of revolution. and i found these books where specimens had lasted 200 years, perfectly preserved, and in the world of digital data that feels temporary or easily dispose of, that this thing remained. i wanted to do something with those dried or barium specimens and speak about these notions of survival. to me it was so much about that. in this book, those specimens

stood alongside his data recordings. and from that point i went off to find things like that picture at the munich conference of hitler, mussolini and chamberlain. >> rose: you said to someone else, "i was interested in the idea of these men who felt they could control the evolution of the world with their language and assertions and flimsy paperwork they are about to sign and nature is this castrated decorative thing that sits between them." >> yes, and there are sculptures in the work designed based on plant presses, where all of the 36 agreement they say highlight are pressed up against each other in this squeeze, in this plant press. and to me it was about hearing this cacophony of all of their different agendas, sort of pushing up against one another. and for me it was often about sound even though sound is such an absent component, and everybody who is involved in the agreements was signatory at the

bretton woods conference. >> rose: on economics. >> and established the the i.m.f. and world bank. so it was about these countries that worked to create a certain means by which -- >> so a walking, talking historian. >> i don't know. i don't know what it becomes. >> rose: the play "eclipsed" made broadway history earlier this year becoming the first production featuring an all-female cast, director and playwright. it focuses on five women ligthrough the second liberian civil war. lupita nyong'o is the star of the play. it is directed by leaseil tommy. >> my artistic mandate from the beginning was really quite simple. it was about, number one, telling african women stories and putting them on the american stage and as many stages that would take them.

anding number two, it was giving women of the opportunity. my first play in the continuum, i did coperform, and i knew that the next thing-- this was the next play i wrote. and i knew that-- it was very clear to me i wanted to be outside of it. i wanted to have the outside eye and take care of a world of itself. if i'm performing, my brain is working in a whole other way because i'm focusing on the art of a character. but if i'm stepping out and being the creator, i'm allowing myself to simply focus on everything and everyone and creating a cohesive world with several characters versus just myself and my cocreator of my last play. so it was very important to me, actually, that this play was where i step into being that other type of playwright, not the playwright who always performs but the playwright who doesn't perform and hands it over to performers that you worked with to allow them to let it blossom. >> rose: hois the girl? >> the girl is new to this world

of war. she's just newly been exposed to it, recently lost her parents. and she comes to this compound to learn what it means to be a woman at war. >> rose: and she's different from the other women in the play. >> yes, she's different because she has come from a city. she is somewhat educated as well. and she, until recently, knew exactly where her parents were. >> rose: yet, they want to protect her. >> and they do. they do want to protect her. the matriarch of this compound wants to protect her from what she knows the war can do to a woman and to her body. but, unfortunately, very soon, when the play starts, she's unable to do that. >> rose: what's the challenge for the director? >> the relentless pursuit of specificity. >> rose: specificity. >> never stopping the research. so that the actors when they

step on to that stage, they are bringing a broken heart for this country, for this history, for the political history. they are inhabiting the lives of these women, and this particular war in this particular place, not a general african story but the story of liberia in this window of time. and, also, creating a healthy environment for the women-- for these actresses to go as far as we wanted them to go emotionally. and be able to walk away. >> rose: how did you goat there? >> torture. ... ( laughter ) by basically just constant he pushing -- >> hereverseal, hereversal, hereversal. >> rehearsing them. >> rose: were you tortured? >> i wouldn't call it that. but i just say leasele creates an environment of pursuing your best at all times. the bar is high, and so you have to show up-- you show up in the

rehearsal, and because the bar is so high, you are challenged to meet that bar. >> rose: here is a look at the week ahead. sunday is the day of the chinese grand prix in shanghai. monday is the running of the boston marathon. tuesday is the day the new york presidential primaries are held. ed with is the 82nd annual drama league awards presentation. thursday is the day the olympic flame for the 2016 games will be lit in olympia, greece. friday is earth day and the day of u.n. treato climate change will be signed in new york. saturday is the 400th anniversary of william shakespeare's death. and here is what's new for your weekend: kevin costner, and tommy lee jones are in theaters with a skiify thriller "criminal."

the 2016 n.b.a. play-offs begin on saturday. >> i know what it takes to be the best player in the league. >> i feel confident because i'm the best player in the world. >> rose: the magnetic zeros are playing sunday at the coachella music festival. that's "charlie rose: the week" for this week. on behalf of all of us here, thanks for watching. i'm charlie rose. we'll see you next time.

>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with politics and talk to major garrett of cbs news. >> and it's a dilemma, charlie, built atop an existential crisis which is what is the republican party now, what are its foundational issues, what are its tactile approaches to winning on those issues, not just in the voting booth, but in a legislative context and winning back the presidency. all three of those things have been flowing through this conversation and unresolved for years and the donald trump phenomenon is a manifestation of that. >> rose: we continue with karen elliott house, she talks about saudi arabia as the president plans to go there next week. >> i think they are standing up on their own more because in part they've lost favorite in us and i think that's not a bad thing that the country s